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Practice of Non-Violence
means of settling differences between States when diplomacy had failed, was projected as a means to avoid war. Two World Peace Conferences, held at the Hague in 1899 and 1907 drew up conventions for the establishment and procedure of a permanent tribunal of arbitration.
Although many disputes between great as well as small nations were resolved by arbitration, yet it did not succeed many a time. So the Franco-Prussian, the Anglo-Boer and Russo-Japanese wars were fought preparing the way for the First World War.
The League of Nations
The terrible experience of the First World War and the destruction of millions emphasised the urgent need to form a society of independent nations which would accept international law to regulate their relations, and a system of collective security which would put an end to war, or at least offer an alternative to it. The League of Nations came into being as part of the world order. The Covenant of the League in its preamble gave as one of the objects “the firm establishment of the understanding of international law as the actual rule of conduct among governments, the maintenance of justice, and the scrupulous respect for treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another.” The League set up representative organs and an international secretariat whose purpose was to preserve the peace and promote international co-operation in political, economic and social activities of the members. The Covenant included articles about submiting any serious dispute, likely to lead to a rupture, to arbitration or enquiry by the council of the League. Both the Assembly, on which each member was represented by an equal number of delegates, and the council, where the smaller states had a limited and rotating representation, were vested with large powers of settling difference.
The League of Nations proved much less effective in practice. Its coercive measures against an aggressor state broke down after a few year when challenged, first by Japan, then by Italy, and finally by Nazi Germany. After its failure to check Mussolini and Hitler, the League lost authority as an instrument of collective security.
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